Many small business owners still believe that a website is something only needed by large companies. This may have been true at some point but is certainly not any longer.

First of all, let’s examine the benefits of having a website.

Your website is where you showcase your business to the outside world.

Even a very simple website can give you a more professional appearance and thus far greater credibility. . Having your own domain name allows you to have email addresses linked to that name. So, for example, for your business email address you could have ‘info[at]yourbusinessname.com’ instead of ‘yourbusinessname[at]gmail.com’ , thereby further enhancing your professional image.

It makes it much easier for customers to find you – many people do online research before buying goods or services. If you don’t have a website, your business won’t even be considered. On the other hand, if you do have a website, you are able to compete with much bigger companies – the size of the company does not generally affect search results. A good web design and judicious use of relevant keywords in the content is what makes the difference.

Your competitors may already have websites. If they do, they have a definite advantage over you. If they don’t, you should consider getting yours first and making sure that your business has the advantage.

You have absolute control of your brand and content.

You can interact with your customers and potential customers.

It’s much easier to keep up to date than having a new advertising campaign every time there’s a change.

It’s more cost effective. There’s generally a one-time charge for the Web Design and development and a small ongoing fee for hosting and domain name registration. Compare this to the cost for new advertising campaigns and you should come out well ahead.

Some common reasons given for holding back on getting a website:

You may already have plenty of customers so think that you don’t need a website. A website is about so much more than reaching new customers. It could be a valuable means of saving you time – usually a precious commodity for small business owners. A well designed contact page could allow your customers to interact with you, saving you time you would normally spend on the phone answering queries.

You think your business is too small and there is no budget for a website. A website doesn’t have to be big and fancy. It can be quite simple and still be very effective.

You think your customers aren’t computer users and that they would never interact with your website. As most people have a smartphone these days, this is definitely no longer true. Anyone with a smartphone can access your website.

Yours is not an online business so there’s no need for a website. The advantages of controlling branding and communication are great enough to dispel this argument. Traditional advertising campaigns are becoming more expensive even if they are restricted to your local area. They are also typically restricted to a specific demographic. Your website gives you the ability to promote your business however and whenever you like and your reach is far greater.

You may already be using social media. That’s good but it’s quite volatile and is out of your control. There are new platforms appearing and you can’t control where your customers spend their time. You may have a solid presence on Facebook, but if your potential customers are spending their time on Snapchat, you’ve lost them.

You will probably end up duplicating your efforts on several different platforms and this could lead to conflicting messages. Trying to keep them all relevant and up to date will take a significant amount of time. In contrast to this, having your own website affords you complete control as well as being able to link in to all your social media profiles and add new ones as they come along.

For many small business owners, the perceived cost of having a website is often seen as prohibitive.

This need not be the case as you could have a very simple design. The essentials are who you are, your offering, and how to contact you. Some detail about your hours of business and how to find you is also helpful. It’s also very useful to allow your website visitors to enter their email address. You will then be able to stay in touch with them by sending a newsletter, special offers, etc.

There is software (some of it free) available that you could use to design and build your own website. While this could save you money in the short term, it may work out more expensive in the long run as a professional Web Designer will not only help you with your web design but also help you avoid some common mistakes that are costly to correct later.

Simply discussing your requirements with an experienced Web Designer will help to clarify what features you really need and what you can leave for later. If designed correctly from the beginning, it should be quite easy to add new features to your website later.

An experienced Web Designer will also know about disclaimers, privacy policies and other basic legal requirements for your website. It’s far better to find out about those upfront than it is to fall foul of the legislation.

There are many excellent Web Design Service Providers. When searching for one, it’s perfectly acceptable to ask to see their portfolio to make sure that you like the kind of work they do before you engage their services. You can use their own website as an indication of what they can do. You should also find out about the range of services they offer. For example, apart from the design and development, they may take care of your domain name registration and website hosting for you.

You will probably find that the price of your website including design, hosting and domain name registration is actually far less than the cost of not having a website, especially if you are able to put a value to all the advantages it brings you.

Good Luck !

]]>https://www.rgwebdesignlanka.com/why-your-small-business-needs-a-website/feed/0Why You Should Use WordPress for Your Personal or Business Website ?https://www.rgwebdesignlanka.com/why-you-should-use-wordpress-for-your-personal-or-business-website/
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WordPress is the most popular and best modern content management system (CMS) which is used as the platform for over 75 million websites. It is faster to install, upgrade and deploy with the help of a web designer.

Numerous extensions can be installed, and design ideas can be used with flexible and simple interfaces reducing the cost of development and time required. Furthermore, WordPress has the largest CMS share of the market so far, ranging over a quarter of all the websites. It is the best and most user-friendly system to build a website with. A survey of the top 1 million domains by W3Tech shows that 59% of websites used WordPress. It has great room for expansion and updates.

With high customizability, it offers you great flexibility to update your site with personalized changes to the existing design as required (with the help of a web designer). Being extremely user-friendly, it is not necessarily limited only to the developers. Even the non-tech-savvy ones can easily get used to the CMS and learn how to use WordPress functions. Bloggers and people who need to update their sites on a regular basis need not depend on developers for every single update or post. You can customize your own post and page content (Text, Videos, and Images) at your free will once the site is all set up and ready, which is best done by developers.

You might want to have your site built and set up by a professional web designer for a cleaner finish and desired results and learn your way around it for simple modifications. The setup cost is higher than static websites but does not cost much for content updates (as you can update posts and pages by yourself without the help of a web designer). In comparison with other CMS like Joomla or Drupal, WordPress is better and easy to use. It is also easier for you to find WordPress developers and designers for customization and further development in the future if required. Tweaking your website after initial development is not too hard when it is built using WordPress as it is not a labyrinth of codes like other systems which will put you on lockdown and higher your costs. In addition, here are some major reasons why you should choose WordPress over others.

1. Can be used for most types of websites

WordPress can be used for most of the individual, small business, or cooperate websites with modern designs and functionality making it the ideal first choice for any kind of business activity.

2. Easily customizable

The majority of the people using WordPress are self-employed individuals or small businesses. The specialty of WordPress is that you need not to have any prior knowledge in web designing or development to update content. It is the perfect solution as it is extremely user-friendly making it very easy to customize. It comes with a lot of panels which allow you to change the text, images, or your website as you desire. Using custom coding, you can also add further functionality to your WordPress website which will give you advanced features like contact forms, membership sign-ups, analytics and further on. It transforms your website into a whole new platform with its extra functionality.

3. SEO Friendly

It is madding using high-quality standard compliance codes which produce semantic markup. In simpler words, it makes it easier for your site to show up on search engines like Google. This is why businesses which choose WordPress for their websites have a better chance of ranking higher in the search engines than the others not using WordPress. It is SEO friendly and comes with SEO plugins for your website which will enable you to optimize your website more for better results. (Although it is SEO friendly, you will need an SEO professional service to rank higher in search engines as ranking depends on various factors)

4. Secure

WordPress being developed with security in concern is surely one of the reliable and secure platforms to run a website on. Though the internet is an uncertain place, WordPress offers the best chance of safety than other platforms. Many intruders and cyber attackers try to hack into several sites and get their hands on them. However, with a good web developer and a reliable web hosting company, you can secure your website properly, shutting all possible cyber-attacks out. Brute force attacks and malware is commonly prevalent, but you can keep your website safe with a proper foundation. (This does not mean that it is hacker proof, but it is more secure than other platforms. Most of the issues arise due to outdated core files, extensions, and vulnerabilities in a web host. So keeping them up to date will be the best option).

5. Easy To Manage

It comes with a built-in system which handles updates which enables you to update your core files simply within your admin dashboard on your website. WordPress keeps updating on a regular basis for more efficient and better results, and you will get notified when it does. You need not to worry about the updates as you can simply update with a click of a button (consult your web designer before making updates for the first time as some may have custom codes that may ruin your design). Furthermore, you can also manage your website using your mobile phone! You can use the WordPress mobile app to manage your website.

6. Handles Different Types Of Media

Your WordPress website is not just limited to text. It comes with in-built media manager and uploader which assists you with images, video and audio files. You can also embed videos from YouTube, posts from Facebook, tweets from Twitter, posts from Instagram and so on! Most social media content can be embedded on to your site, making it easier for your visitors to keep in touch with your business or you on social media. It is extremely useful for bloggers and small businesses as it increases their connectivity and followers. Musicians can also add their Soundcloud audio onto their websites. It can be done just by pasting the URL of their Soundcloud audio onto WordPress post editor. It will automatically fetch your audio. With such flexibility and features, WordPress stands as the best choice for any personal or business website.

7. Mobile Friendly

Search engines like Google are penalizing sites that aren’t mobile friendly. They are simply ranked lower on the search result page which drastically drops their visitor count. However, with WordPress, you need not to worry about your site not being visible. It is easily accessible and adapts well on tablets and smartphones which is a big plus. Many users are always on the go, and if you really do want your site to get the best results in the modern world, it is best when it is mobile friendly.

8. Easy Support

If you want to update your website content and if you are clueless or lost, you need not to worry. There are millions of sources found online. A simple Google search for the error or problem you are facing will pull you all the necessary guides and tutorial videos which will aid you to resolve your problem (or you can simply contact your web designer).

9. Hosting

Most of the popular hosts provide support for WordPress (cpanel based servers are recommended for WordPress based websites).
If you want to change your current host, there is very little to zero downtime when you decide to switch your hosting provider for your WordPress site. WordPress CMS is available with all web hosts making it a very simple and easy process. It is not complex to move your website to one server to another. WordPress CMS makes your migration process easy.

10. Multiple Users

If you are not a one-man show, you need not to worry. You can assign different roles to different people and grant them access to your site. You can also keep a tab on what they are doing and what changes are made to your site by them. You can give them various roles which WordPress provides which limit their privileges and authority over the site.

Types of websites built using WordPress

WordPress can be used in numerous ways, and it helps you build simple websites to complex eCommerce marketplaces. You can build your business online and put all your products and services available online for your visitors using WordPress. Most frequent types of websites built using WordPress are,

Personal Website

If you are planning on building a personal website, to showcase your information or your services, WordPress is the best choice. You can frequently update it with your current projects or new accomplishments swiftly.

Blogs

WordPress initially started as a simple blogging platform and soon evolved into the most powerful and used CMS. With WordPress, blogging has become sophisticated and polished making it more mature. There are plenty of tools which will aid your blog and help it grow.

Business Website

If you are building a website to represent your business online, this is your best choice. As mentioned earlier, being extremely user-friendly, it helps your business to be up to date with new contents. You can grow your business over the horizons with a well-built site which showcases your business and its products online.

e-Commerce Website

If you are looking to sell your products or items online, it can be done too with a WordPress based e-commerce system developed with the help of an e-commerce designer. You can simply upload the picture of your product/service and add additional content about it making it easy for your visitors online. You can also integrate online payment option which is easier for your visitors to make a purchase and for you to keep track of your orders. This will not only get your business streamlined but make it easier for you to expand your business and not be restricted to any geographic location. It also opens up a whole new market of an online audience.

Job Board

Recruitment companies and HR consultancies prefer WordPress as it is easier to update with a job vacancy. They need not depend on a developer every time a vacancy shows up. After the initial development, they can update the necessary details in the admin dashboard which is very easy.

Business Directory

Just like Job Boards, you can list various businesses on the web which is of high demand. WordPress business directory plugins extensions/custom coding enable you to create a business directory.

Q&A Website

Create your own version of Quora and Yahoo Answers using WordPress. If you are conducting a survey or collecting data, you can simply build a question and answers site which will do the data collection for you.

Non-Profit Website

Non-profit organizations are usually working on a tight budget as they have bigger goals for a greater good in focus. You can build a relatively affordable WordPress website which displays information about your organization and its cause making it easier for the online audience to connect with you.

Portfolio Website

If you are a Freelancer who is involved in Graphic designing, video editing, content writing or other such services, your best chances of getting clients are with a good portfolio. You can easily add and update your portfolio to your WordPress.

A few more websites best built using WordPress are,

Online Community

Coupon Websites

Auction Websites

Wiki Websites

Photography

School or College Institutions

Private Websites

Religious Websites

With a built-in user management system, it is compatible with almost every website requirement. However, if you are looking to build a much complex web system like reservation or booking system, it is better built from scratch rather than using WordPress. It has a strong following all around the world. Developers are often locked in non-user-friendly sites which is never the case with WordPress. Unlike other platforms, it is easy to maintain and have complete control over your website with additional privileges. Hopefully, this has helped answer your question, “Why to choose WordPress?”

Finding the right web host for your business is a very crucial decision and choice to make. Your business will rely on the host for their efficiency and reliability in order to keep things going on in order. The process of this decision making can get very confusing and stressful as those who do it will be info-dumped with bunches of terms and words that don’t make sense.

Often, there is confusion as to what outweighs the other or what is more important to the company to make an investment. The jargon used will enough cause enough mix-ups, and sometimes these may cost the company precious time, money and resources. Therefore, it is important to know a few important keywords to look for in general to make sure you don’t make the wrong decisions while choosing a web host. The few really important ones that needed to be kept in mind regardless of whatever business is in question are listed below.

1. Storage and Space

Storage and space aren’t a relatively new problem, and now, several businesses do not treat it as big of an issue. However, when looking for the right web host, it is crucial to have a look at how much storage capacity is offered. By knowing this, one can evaluate if it suits the needs and budget of the company. Several hosting plans will try to rope prospective buyers in by promising unlimited disk space and storage capacity, but it has to be noted that this is usually not the case and most of these plans will come with restrictions. If your website has a lot of media elements such as music and video streaming, you might want to consider having more than 1 GB of space, however, for most cases, this space is enough, and it is rare that many companies would want to invest in a plan that offers more. If you want to host files, it is better to invest in a cloud storage service.

2. About server reliability

When running a website for a business, you want to be sure that it does not go offline abruptly and cause inconveniences for those who are trying to access it. A site that goes offline often is often pulled out or ranked very low on search engine results- this means that when you search for your business site that has been going offline, the chances are that it won’t show up for a good few pages of the search results. Therefore, it is important to choose a host that is reliable, increases uptime and keeps the site running.

3. Maintenance and related costs

Surely, when looking for hosts, maintenance costs is often one of the first things that are looked for. Often, those who are host shopping do not really know what prices equate to what, and how much to pay for their sort of businesses. It should be understood that a personal interest/hobby-based site is the starting rage and will cost around 5 US Dollars. This can keep increasing based on the items, elements, and customization. Costs may go up to as much as 2,000 USD for a web application that is custom-built and packs custom features that will be having larger audiences. Therefore, whilst looking for the right web hosting packages, the nature of the business and their website along with their budgets should be critically taken into account. Sometimes, the costs that you pay at a discounted rated may grow to a double or triple. To avoid a nasty surprise in the near future, make sure you check the renewal rates of the packages. These packages are not meant to be lifetime ones so as the website grows, make sure to invest accordingly.

4. Traffic and Bandwidth

Bandwidth is another important feature to look for whilst host searching. Bandwidth refers to the kind of traffic and information that will be allowed to transfer between your business’ website and the users who access it and the internet space where this happens. Again, this has to be evaluated based on the business’ scales and needs. If the business website is estimated to have around 5,000 or lesser visitors, bandwidth should not be a big issue. If you put some time into browsing these packages, the bandwidth is a good indicator of the host’s systems and connections, and you can easily figure out which ones are the best and the right fit for your business. Make sure to take into account the budget requirements and general targeted traffic of your business beforehand.

5. Customer Support

Suppose in the off chance that you run into problems on your website, be it an outage, or other issues, supportive and helpful customer service is an absolute necessity. The support needs to be swift and strong. The ones that you need should be able to provide their services 24/7 as we do not know when problems may arise. Make sure that they are easily accessible (telephone, e-mail or even text chat). Another feature to take notice of is the SLA. The SLA stands for Service Level Agreement. Make sure to check the agreement, and if a 99% uptime is provided, it means that the site may be down for 3.5 days per year. The more expensive the package is, the more percentages it will be. Expensive options may have up to 5 nines. That is, 99.999%. This means the site will be offline for far lesser times.

6. Safety and Security

Safety and security is a very big concern for all businesses. Good and tight security is paramount when the business requires information that is personal or important to users. A case of a leak or a hack jeopardizes the security, loses the users and potential customers’ trusts and spells certain doom for the business undoubtedly. If you are confused as to what to look for when it comes to security here are a few options:

• Monitoring

Look up if the host and provider monitor their networks and systems for any unusual logins, activities or other problems like intrusions or suspicious activity. Furthermore, make sure you know how the support teams deal with these issues. There are several good procedures and policies that need to be maintained to achieve and prevent any problems through monitoring.

• Prevention from DDoSing and SSL

Make sure to check if the host provides an SSL certificate. If they do, you are obligated to implement it, and it is the business’ responsibility for the same. However, if an SSL is not provided, you can not implement it. DDoSing renders the site unusable and inaccessible, especially if there is a large amount of traffic coming in. So when trying to look for good security measures, be on the lookout to what security measures are in place for instances such as these.

• Back Up and Data restoration

If you can, ask the company how often they back up data on the sites they host. This is a good security measure as the data that is backed up is stored in a location that is not in the main servers. In case of a move or attack, this data can be restored a cleaner and secure server. When thinking along these lines, make sure to take a look at how often the hosts perform backups and in what intervals. Make sure also to observe if the data is backed up for only the host’s purposes. These backups need to be secure, and process involved also need a good amount of security.

If your website is intending to not have a lot of important data especially from the user-end, you may neglect this area. However, it is paramount to think of this intensely as the host, or the business’ data may also be compromised. Just like the other features, make sure to run it by business needs and budgets to figure out what to choose and employ and what security features you might need the most over the others. If an SSL certificate is not provided, make sure to make an inquiry before proceeding further.

7. About Account Limits

All hosts have a set of limits that their customers should agree too. When exceeding these limits, extra costs are incurred, or sometimes the website is shut down and discontinued permanently, sometimes the company may no longer provide you services from that point on as well. For each host or package, these limits are different. Some are more relaxed than others. If you exceed these limitations and your site is suspended, bear in mind that you might not even get a refund for the amount you paid. This means that you have to carefully and slowly read through all of their terms and use their services only when you are fully and completely in accordance with them. If these terms seem unclear or not as detailed as they should be, avoid their services. These limits and suspension details are not the company management’s discretion. They should run this by you first and only then, you should sign up and use their provided services. Before going through these agreements, make sure that you also have the needs of your business and interests in mind. If a clause can not be fulfilled or promised by either side, find another package or host. Failing to do this may cause problems in the future and waste precious time, money and resources.

8. Scalability

You need a host that will host a website that should be able to take in sudden surges of traffic and a service that can grow alongside your business, as it does. Make sure to look at options for upgrading your website as your business scales so as to accommodate more traffic. If your business is catering towards seasonal services, then have a look at whether or not the provider offers opportunities to upgrade the package. Check the incurred costs and also have a look at the possible side effects such as downtime if needed and make sure that these are passable for your business or whether it will affect it negatively during the update.

9. Data Centre Locations

It is important to note that the location of data centers plays a very big role in the growing and success of your business and website. If the data center is closer to the user base, the pages, and website load faster. Therefore, if you have an idea as to where your highest density user base is located, you can invest in a package that offers a data center there. If this is not possible, find a package that offers a Content Delivery Network (CDN). This provision will be able to produce a static of the contents of the website if there is no close data center for a user’s location. Most commonly, users might see this as a cached page.

With the above nine tips, you can know what to specifically and exactly look for when browsing through web hosting services. Make sure to create a checklist before you start looking. Therefore you would not have to make a bad investment. As discussed, a bad host might cost you a lot of potential customers, users and a lot of time and money. Finding the right one will ensure that your businesses and services are always accessible and favorable to the general public. Having basic requirements and the business’ budgets in mind beforehand can narrow down your options and, in the end, you can shortlist the hosts that you think will best serve to your business’s needs. A calm and thought-out decision will always prove to be a right choice when it comes to picking a web hosting service as rushed decisions may not always be right and you might end up paying more for very fewer features than what you were promised and you might end up exceeding limitations that you didn’t really know were there.